Pilot, 20
by Neon Kitsune
Summary: People seem to be obsessed with giving the Winchesters a sister.  So OK, now they have two.
1. Small Differences

In the dead of night, Sam's eyes flicked open.

There had been a sound—an unfamiliar sound. You learned the sounds of a neighborhood after a while, learned to sleep through them, but this hadn't been one of those; this sounded like there was someone in the apartment.

Sam glanced over at Jess, who was still dead to the world, being able to sleep through backfires in the street, brass bands passing under the window, and as far as Sam could tell nuclear bombardment. It was comforting, in a weird way, being with someone who didn't spend their entire life waiting for the next attack.

Sam slid out of bed and padded a few steps down the hall. There was a breeze blowing in from the open window in the living room, and that window had been closed when they went to bed. And then a silhouette went past the bead curtain at the end of the hall. Sam's breath caught for a second. It was unlikely to be a burglar in this part of town, a well-known student ghetto; odds were in favor of an intruder from another life entirely.

Sam could feel the reflexes of that other life kicking into action. Fortunately Jess's softball bat was leaning up against the wall, an acceptable weapon if not a very specialized one—and if the situation called for something really esoteric, Sam was screwed anyway.

It only took a moment to find a decent position, though the intruder was good, very quiet, and that was a bad sign; folks ransacking the low-rent district didn't tend to be subtle. For a moment Sam wondered if the better thing to do was to go wake Jess and get the both of them the hell out, but then a defensive instinct kicked in that defied logic; this was home.

Thoughts of retreat faded when the dark shape moved cautiously out of the kitchen. Sam swung the bat hard, aiming for the upper back, all the power of hips and back and shoulders behind the blow; it would stun and incapacitate, but not kill, because if this was someone from the other life Sam would be presenting a few questions before calling the cops.

The intruder ducked the swing by a hair's breadth and struck back while Sam was still off-balance. He was trying to get Sam to drop the bat, which was mostly useless now anyway so Sam let it go, backing off enough to get the distance for a kick. It connected, but not solidly; the intruder twisted again at just the right moment, grabbed Sam's foot and pushed. Sam went over backwards and landed with a whoop of expelled air. There wasn't time to get up again before the intruder pounced, pinning Sam's wrist and throat with his hands.

"Whoa, easy, tiger," said a familiar voice, and Samantha Winchester stared into her sister's face for the first time in over two years.

"Deanne?"

* * *

><p>OK, yes, this is total crack, but it's a plotbunny that wouldn't leave me alone. I'm going to do the Pilot, and see where it goes from there. Most people are not changing; it's not going to be a matter of "every person in the world is of opposite gender."<p>

I realize the pilot had some stuff before this scene. I think it's pretty clear there's no way I could have managed those bits without making it clear what I was pulling, thus they're left out.


	2. Hunting Trip

Deanne laughed at her surprise. "You scared the crap out of me," Sam said. "That's 'cause you're out of practice," her sister said smugly, and Sam's eyes narrowed. Just as Deanne was registering that as a bad sign, Sam grabbed her wrist and yanked, using the leverage to swing them both over so that her sister was face down on the floor, one arm wrenched up behind. She got her knee into the center of Deanne's back and pushed just enough to make her point.

"Or not," her sister said, not nearly as grudgingly as Sam had expected. Sam just waited. "Get off of me." Sam gave it another second and then let go and rolled to her feet, and gave Deanne a wary hand up.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Sam asked bluntly. Her sister grinned, trying for casual, but Sam could read the set of her shoulders even under her bulky jacket; two years wasn't enough to dull everything. "Well, I was looking for a beer," Deanne said. Sam waited a beat and then, in precisely the same tone, repeated, "What the hell are you doing here?"

Deanne sighed and said, "Okay, all right. We gotta talk."

Sam rubbed at her face with both hands. "The phone?"

"If I'd called, would you have picked up?" Sam was trying to work out a decent answer to that when the lights flicked on.

"Sam?" Jess said. They both turned to look. Jess was wearing only the plaid flannel pants he'd gone to bed in. Flustered though she was, Sam retained enough presence of mind to want to roll her eyes at the way Deanne was eyeing his torso.

"Jess, hey. Deanne, this is my boyfriend Jess," she managed. The situation was starting to feel like a scene from a farce.

Jess said, "Wait—your sister Deanne?" Sam nodded and Jess's face broke into one of his smiles, like the sun coming out. And Deanne, of course, took a step in Jess's direction. "You know, I love plaid," she said. "And you are _way_ out of my sister's league."

Jess, bless him, let that one sail right over his head. "Just let me go put a robe on," he said, and turned.

"No, no, wouldn't dream of it," Deanne said. Sam wondered irritably what it was about that voice that worked on guys. "But I gotta borrow your girlfriend here for a little talk about some private family business. But, you know, nice meeting you." It was a dismissal, and that was _quite_ enough of that, as far as Sam was concerned.

"No," she said, and went to Jess's side, slipping her arm around his waist. He draped his over her shoulders, fairly vibrating with curiosity. "Whatever you want to say, you can say it in front of him." She gave Deanne a look that clearly said there wasn't going to be any argument on this score, and saw her sister read it as easily as she could see the tension in the way Deanne stood.

"Okay…" Deanne said slowly. "So. Um. Mom hasn't been home in a few days." Sam did not quite roll her eyes. "So she's been spending too much quality time with Jim Beam. She'll stumble home sooner or later."

"She's on a _hunting trip_, and she hasn't been home in a few days," Deanne said, and for the first time sounded actually worried. Sam willed her face still as Jess gave her a curious glance and thought fast. In the end the decision didn't take long, but that didn't mean she had to like it.

"Jess," she said reluctantly. "We have to go outside. I'll be right back."

*.*

Sam took a moment to throw jeans and a sweatshirt on over the cami and panties she'd worn to bed before she met Deanne at the door. As they walked down the stairs, she said quietly, "Deanne, this is not okay. You can't just break in, middle of the night, and expect me to hit the road with you."

Deanne, sounding slightly exasperated, said, "You're not hearing me, Sammy. Mom's missing. I need you to help me find her."

"Yeah-you remember the poltergeist in Amherst? Or the Devil's Gates in Clifton? She was missing then, too. She's _always_ missing, and she's always fine," Sam said, a trifle more crisply than she'd intended. Deanne stopped on the stairs, and perforce Sam did too. "Not for this long. Now are you gonna come with me or not?" Deanne asked.

Put that way, there was only one answer. "I'm not," Sam said.

"Why not?" Deanne asked.

"I swore I was done hunting for good," Sam said simply.

Deanne made an annoyed face and said, "Come on. It wasn't easy, but it wasn't that bad." She started down the steps again.

Sam went with her. "Yeah? When I told Mom I was scared of the thing in my closet, she gave me a forty-five." Deanne paused at the outside door and threw a puzzled look back. "What else was she supposed to do?"

"When your nine-year-old tells you she's scared of closet monsters, you're _supposed to_ tell her not to be afraid of the dark," she said. Her sister snorted.

"Don't be afraid of the dark? Are you kidding me? Of course you should be afraid of the dark. You know what's out there," Deanne said.

Sam tilted her head, conceding the point. "But still," she said. "The way we grew up, after Dad was killed, and Mom's obsession with finding what killed him. That wasn't exactly a normal life." Deanne's body language was getting more restless by the second. "And she still hasn't found the damn thing. No matter how many _other_ things she kills."

"_We_ save a lot of people from those other things," Deanne said pointedly, aligning herself with Mom and the hunt as if Sam didn't know where her loyalties lay.

Sam paused until her sister would meet her eyes squarely. "You think Dad would have wanted this for us?" she asked. Deanne rolled her eyes and hit the crash bar on the door. Sam followed again into the parking lot, where Deanne's ancient Chevy Impala sat parked like a monolith. "Come on, Dee. The weapon training, melting silver into bullets? We were raised like soldiers."

Deanne's stride had gone stiff and angry, and her voice matched it as she demanded, "So what are you gonna do? You're just gonna live some normal, apple pie life? Is that it?" They reached the car and Deanne put a hand out to caress it as if drawing strength from it.

"If you want to call it normal when I can't even tell my boyfriend, well, pretty much anything about my life before," Sam said. "Me, I call it safe."

"And that's why you ran away." Deanne looked away, but Sam could hear the bitterness perfectly. She tried not to sound angry herself when she said, _"I_ was just going to college. It was Mom who said if I left I should stay gone. So that's what I'm doing."

"Yeah, well, Mom's in real trouble right now, if she's not dead already. I can feel it," Deanne said, catching her eye again. Sam didn't know what to say to that, exactly; Deanne seemed to take her silence as encouragement. "I can't do this alone," her sister said.

Sam almost laughed. "Yes, you can."

Deanne broke eye contact, and said, "OK, then. I don't want to."

Sam sighed and looked down at her hands. She really, really did not want to get sucked into this. But this was her sister asking, and family got a little slack. "What was she hunting?" she said, right before the silence would have been way too long. She tried not to see the flash of delight that went over Deanne's face as her sister turned to jam her keys into the trunk lock.

The trunk itself was empty, of course, but Deanne pulled up the lid of the spare tire compartment to reveal the arsenal and propped it with a shotgun, which Sam devoutly hoped was unloaded. "OK, where the hell did I put that thing?" Deanne muttered.

"So when Mom left, why didn't you go with her?" Sam asked, as Deanne pawed through the clutter.

"I was working my own gig," Deanne said. "This voodoo thing, down in New Orleans."

Sam blinked at the side of her head and tried not to sound too skeptical. "Mom let you go after something by yourself?"

Deanne paused, her hand on a folder, and gave her a look. "I'm twenty-six, babe," she said dryly, and pulled a few papers from the folder. "All right, here we go. So Mom was checking out this two-lane blacktop just outside of Jericho, California. About a month ago, this guy—" she handed over one of the sheets "—vanished. They found his car, but he's completely MIA."

It was a printout of an article from a paper called the_ Jericho Herald_. The headline read "Centennial Highway Disappearance" and included a shot of a middle-aged man captioned "Andrew Carey MISSING." The date was September 19th. Sam looked up at Deanne and said, "So…maybe he was kidnapped. It does happen."

"Yeah," Deanne said. "Well, here's another one in April. Another one in December oh-four, oh-three, ninety-eight, ninety-two, ten of them over the past twenty years." She dropped a printout onto the arsenal for each date. "All men, all the same five-mile stretch of road," she said, and gathered the printouts again, taking the one Sam was holding. "The frequency started picking up, so Mom went to go dig around. That was about three weeks ago, and I haven't heard from her since, which is bad enough. But here's the kicker. I got this voicemail yesterday." She picked up a little handheld tape recorder and hit the button. The recording was bad, full of static and the dropouts of bad signal, but their mother's voice was recognizable.

"Deanne...something big is starting to happen...I need to try and figure out what's going on. It may... Be very careful, Dee. We're all in danger." Sam's eyes widened as Deanne stopped the recording. Behind the voice and the static, there was something else. She looked up at her sister and said, "You know there's EVP on that?"

Deanne grinned at her. "Not bad, Sammy. Kind of like riding a bike, isn't it?" Sam just shook her head, and Deanne shrugged and continued, "Have it your way. I slowed the message down, ran it through a filter, took out the hiss, and this is what I got." She hit play again, and another woman's voice said plaintively, "I can never go home."

"Never go home," Sam repeated. Deanne hit Stop and dropped the recorder back into the clutter. She pulled the shotgun out of its place, set it down, and slammed the trunk with a little more force than necessary; Sam could see her trying to work herself up to something. Finally Deanne leaned back against the trunk, her arms crossed in front of her. "You know, in almost two years I've never bothered you, never asked you for a thing," Deanne said, and then stopped as if that were all she needed to say, and Sam sighed because it pretty much was.

"All right. I'll go. I'll help you find her," she said, feeling as if the words were being dragged from her. In a rare display of empathy, Deanne just nodded. Sam continued, "But I have to get back first thing Monday. Just wait here." She turned to go back across the parking lot, but stopped when Deanne asked, "What's first thing Monday?"

Sam gritted her teeth. "I have this...I have an interview."

"What, a job interview? Skip it," Deanne said, and that was just so _Dee_ that it made Sam want to rip her hair out. She tried not to snap, but she knew her tone was tight when she replied, "It's a law school interview, and it's my whole future on a plate."

"Law school?" Deanne sounded faintly scornful, and even more faintly impressed.

"So do we have a deal?" Sam asked, but her sister didn't reply.

*.*

Sam was sliding her large knife into her duffel bag when she heard Jess come into the bedroom behind her. Fortunately her body blocked his view.

"Wait. You're taking off?" he asked. She looked up at him and his face changed from faint annoyance to concern. "Is this about your mom, is she all right?"

"Yeah," Sam said. "You know, just a little family drama." She still didn't know what to tell him, how much to tell him. She was pretty sure she'd have to break the news at some point, but right before leaving for two days probably wasn't the best time to start trying to convince him the world was scarier than he thought.

"Your sister said she was on a hunting trip?" Jess asked. He went and sat on the bed. He sounded a little surprised, but not incredulous; Jess's family was the hearty outdoorsy type, so the concept of a woman going hunting wasn't completely alien to him. Sam went over to the dresser and turned on the lamp to better examine the contents of her t-shirt drawer.

She pulled out a few things and tossed them towards the bag. "Oh, yeah, she's up at the cabin, probably got Jim, Jack, and José along with her. I'm just going to go bring her back."

"What about your interview?" Jess asked. Sam paused in putting her shirts into the bag and smiled at him. "I'll make the interview," she said. "This is only for a couple days." She zipped the duffel and slung it over her shoulder, trying to look reassuring. He stood as she took at step towards the bedroom door.

"Samantha. Just a second, please," Jess said. She stopped and turned, looking up at his face from under her bangs. "Just stop for a second. You sure you're okay?" Jess said. There was only concern in his expression. She chuckled, trying to demonstrate how not a big deal this was. "I'm fine," she said. He didn't look convinced, and stepped closer, setting his hands on her shoulders.

"It's just...you won't even talk about your family. And now you're taking off in the middle of the night to spend a weekend with them? And with Monday coming up, which is kind of a huge deal," he said.

"I'll be back in time, I promise," Sam said. "Everything's going to be OK." Jess bent down to kiss her and she threaded one hand through his hair.

"Just tell me where you're going," Jess said against her lips.

"I'll be back in time," Sam said again. And then she turned away, fast, so she wouldn't have to watch him look worried anymore.


	3. Old Wounds

Sam sat in the passenger seat of the Impala, door open and feet on the pavement. She was sorting through Deanne's box of cassette tapes-actual _cassette tapes_-and trying hard to ignore the Allman Brothers, playing far too loudly over the speakers of the gas station. Deanne had gone into the convenience store while the gas pumped, no doubt to acquire some of the horrible junk she and Mom had never minded living on.

"Hey, you want breakfast?" her sister said, and Sam looked up. Sure enough, Deanne's arms were loaded with chips and cheap doughnuts and candy. "No. Thanks," Sam said. Deanne shrugged and thrust the haul at her. "Hold this," she said.

Juggling bags and boxes, Sam asked idly, "So how'd you pay for all this?" Deanne, standing by the gas pump and watching it tick over, just gave her a look. "Ah, you and Mom still running credit card scams?"

"Hunting ain't exactly a pro ball career, princess," Deanne said. The pump dinged and she pulled the nozzle and hung it back on its hook. "Besides, all we do is apply. It's not our fault they send us the cards." Sam could tell that that was just a fact of life, too; there was not a hint of defensiveness in her tone. She dusted her hands off and headed back for the driver's door.

The junk food dealt with, Sam pulled her legs into the car and shut the door. "Yeah? And what names did you write on the application this time?" she asked.

Deanne opened the door and settled into the driver's seat. "Connie Aframian. And her daughter Rosa." She picked up a bag and tore it open. "Scored two cards out of that one."

"That sounds about right," Sam said. Deanne just looked at her sidelong, and she let it go. "You have got to update your music collection," she said.

"Why?" Deanne said. Sam shuffled through the box again. "Well, for one, they're cassette tapes. And two..." She plucked tapes from the box as she named them. "Black Sabbath? Motorhead? Metallica?" Deanne took the last one from her. "Come on, it's the greatest hits of mullet rock. We're not even old enough for mullet rock."

"House rules, Sammy," Deanne said, and shoved the tape into the player on the dash. "Driver picks the music-shotgun shuts her cakehole." She jabbed the tape's case back into the box and started the engine. The Impala let out a growl Sam could feel in her chest.

"You know, Sammy is a chubby twelve-year-old," Sam said, as the first riffs of "Enter Sandman" started to play. "It's Sam, okay?"

Deanne put the car in gear and flashed her a grin. "Sorry, I can't hear you, the music's too loud," she said.

Sam opened her mouth, shut it again. It was only for a day or two. Deanne pulled out of the gas station, drumming her fingers on the wheel.

*.*

By the time they were within ten miles of Jericho, the music had rolled around to AC/DC (Back in Black, always a classic) and Sam had gotten through to the hospital and the morgue. Deanne had insisted that was her job because she was the one who was good at talking to people; Sam wondered who did it when she wasn't around, then, because Mom sure wasn't the talking-to-people type. But since it gave her something to do besides listen to guys with big hair and eye makeup, she'd done it.

"All right. So, there's no one matching Mom at the hospital or the morgue," she reported. "So that's something, I guess."

"Check it out," Deanne said in reply, nodding her chin at the bridge ahead. There were police cars, and a whole herd of cops. Sam was reminded of the part of "Alice's Restaurant" where Arlo talks about the getaway and the aerial photography, except that this was probably something a little more serious than a load of trash dumped over a cliff. She traded a look with her sister and Deanne pulled over.

They spent a few seconds taking things in; then Deanne opened the glove compartment and pulled out a box full of ID cards. Sam caught glimpses of Deanne's face and Mom's, each with a different name and affiliation-FBI, DEA, CDC, and other assorted alphabet soup-before Deanne selected one. She gave Sam a grin that Sam didn't like the look of at _all_. "Let's go," she said, and opened her door. Sam closed her eyes and took a quick, deep breath before following. It would've been nice to at least know_ what kind_ of officer of the law she was about to be pretending to be.

As they approached, the cop who seemed to be in charge was yelling down to divers in the river, asking if they'd found anything. They answered in the negative. Another officer came up to him, and as they got into earshot Sam heard the other one say, "Amy's putting up missing posters downtown."

Deanne walked up to the officers as if she owned the place and said, "You fellas had another one like this just last month, didn't you?" The head cop-nametag read "Jaffe"-turned to face her and gave her a quick up-and-down. Sam watched him take in the leather jacket, jeans and heavy boots and come up with _Dyke, or professional_. Jaffe's eyes flicked to her and, since she was dressed in similar manner, didn't get anything more helpful. The cop visibly decided to play it safe. "And who are you," he asked bluntly.

Deanne flashed her badge at him and said, "Federal marshals."

Jaffe blinked. "You ladies are a little young for marshals, aren't you?" Unspoken was, _And where's your minder_, but these days he had to at least pretend he wasn't surprised to see women doing this kind of work. Deanne, in any case, just laughed, and Sam marveled once again at just how good she was at deflecting suspicion. "That's so sweet of you," Deanne said. She went over to the abandoned car that seemed to be the center of the activity-at least, it was the only non-police vehicle aside from the Impala. "You did have another one just like this, correct?" Deanne asked, bending to peer into the driver's window.

Jaffe glanced at Sam, back at Dee, and gave in to Deanne's air of authority. "Yeah, that's right," he said. "About a mile up the road. There've been others before that."

Sam decided it was time to hold up her end of the conversation. "So, this victim, you knew him?" she asked.

Jaffe nodded and said, "Town like this, everybody knows everybody." Deanne was circling the car. "Any connection between the victims, besides that they're all men?"

"No. Not so far as we can tell," Jaffe said. He was starting to look a little unhappy, so Sam gave him a smile as she went to join her sister. "So what's the theory?" she asked.

"Honestly, we don't know," Jaffe said. "Serial murder? Kidnapping ring?"

"Well, that is exactly the kind of crack police work I'd expect out of you guys," Deanne said, and Sam stomped on her foot hard-in her boots it was almost a symbolic gesture, but that remark had just shot any chance they had of a decent relationship with this police department right out of the water. Time for a tactical retreat.

"Thank you for your time," Sam said thinly, and started away at a quick walk. She mustered another smile for Jaffe and nodded at the other deputy. "Gentlemen," she said. Deanne caught up after a few seconds and punched her in the arm.

"Ow," she said mildly. "What was that for?"

"Why'd you have to step on my foot?" Deanne asked.

"Why do_ you_ have to talk to the police like that?" Sam asked, though she'd been familiar with Dee's...issues with authority figures since she was old enough to work out what an authority figure was. Any such figure except Mom, of course. Mom got complete and unquestioning obedience.

Deanne got in front of her and she drew up shot to avoid walking into her sister. "Come on," Deanne said. "They don't really know what's going on, we're all alone on this. If we're going to find Mom we've got to get to the bottom of it ourselves." Sam was actually inclined to agree with her, but that wasn't really an answer to the question. However, there were more cops arriving from behind Deanne's back, so she just cleared her throat and cut her eyes in their direction. Time to have the sweet-talking-the-locals discussion once they were clear. Deanne turned to face the new arrivals as the one with the sheriff's badge said, "Can I help you ladies?" The other two wore suits and ties that practically screamed _Hello, we are FBI agents_.

"No sir, we were just leaving," Deanne said, and started walking again. Sam sent up a silent prayer that was denied as Deanne nodded to the agents. "Agent Mulder, Agent Scully," she said, and Sam wished she could step on her foot again. She could feel the sheriff's eyes on them all the way to the Impala.

*.*

The drive into town was short, as was the discussion of why it was a bad idea to mouth off to local cops-it consisted of Sam trying to bring it up and Deanne snapping at her. _Only a couple of days_, she thought again, and let it drop. Once they hit the main drag, Deanne found a place to park near the movie theater. The marquee read **Emergency Town Hall Meeting - Sunday 8 pm - Be safe out there**. As they climbed out of the car, Sam caught sight of a young woman stapling a poster to a light pole, which had a picture of a reasonably attractive young man and the caption "Missing Troy Squire". Sam nudged Deanne and muttered, "The cops at the bridge were talking about her."

"You catch her name?" Deanne asked. "Amy," Sam said, and Dee sighed. "Not much to work with. Great."

"Yeah," Sam said. "You'll think of something."

"You're Amy, right?" Deanne asked as they came up to the young woman. She turned to them, her remaining posters clutched to her chest.

"Yeah," she said, sounding a little wary. Sam eyed her sister with mild interest, waiting to see what she'd come up with.

"Yeah, Troy told us about you," Deanne said. "We're his cousins? I'm Deanne, Dee, this is Sammy." Sam rolled her eyes in annoyance.

Amy looked them over and said, "He never mentioned you to me." She turned and headed up the sidewalk; Deanne and Sam followed.

"That's Troy, I guess," Deanne said. Sam recognized the signs of wild improvisation. "We're from Modesto, we don't see him much."

Sam decided to try a more direct tack. "We're looking for him too," she said. "Just kinda asking around." Amy betrayed her first hint of interest, but at that moment another young woman approached and put a hand on Amy's arm. "Hey, are you okay?" the newcomer asked, giving Sam and Deanne suspicious looks.

Sam tried for a reassuring smile. "Look, would it be okay if we just asked a few questions?"

Amy hesitated, but Sam kept smiling and apparently it worked; after a second she nodded. They decamped to a diner nearby and slid into a booth, Deanne and Sam on one side and Amy and her friend, introduced as Rachel, on the other. Sam ordered coffee and the other two girls lunch, and once they were settled Sam said, "Okay. So, can you tell us what you know? We've been getting bits and pieces, but it'd be helpful to hear it all at once." Deanne was sitting back, looking almost uninterested, but Sam knew she'd be keeping track; it was just that, once again, talking to people was Sam's job.

Amy said, "I was on the phone with Troy. He was driving home. He said he would call me right back, and...he never did." She looked almost apologetic, as if she wished she had more to say.

"He didn't say anything strange, or out of the ordinary?" Sam prompted her, but Amy shook her head and said, "No. I mean, nothing I remember."

Sam thought for a second and decided to try circling around on the subject. "I like your necklace," she said. It was silver, a five-pointed star in a circle. Amy touched it briefly at the mention.

"Troy gave it to me," she said, and laughed. "Mostly to scare my parents with the, you know, devil stuff."

Sam chuckled along with her. "Actually, it means just the opposite," she said. "A pentagram is protection against evil. Really powerful. I mean, if you believe in that kind of thing." Which, of course, she and Deanne perforce did, but she was well aware they were in the minority. Deanne leaned forward, and Sam stifled a sigh. Dee wasn't much for circling, as a rule.

"Okay. Thank you, Unsolved Mysteries," Deanne said. She fixed Amy with a significant stare. "Here's the deal, ladies. The way Troy disappeared, something's not right. So if you've heard anything..." Sam thought that was a little much, but Amy and Rachel swapped glances. "What is it?" Deanne asked.

"Well, it's just... I mean, with all these guys going missing, people talk," Rachel said.

"What do they talk about?" Sam asked. Deanne just sat back again, looking satisfied with herself.

"It's kind of this local legend. This one girl, she got murdered out on Centennial, like decades ago." Sam could feel Deanne's eyes on her, but she just looked at Rachel encouragingly. "Supposedly she's still out there. She hitchhikes. And whoever picks her up?" Rachel paused dramatically. "They disappear forever."

Sam felt Deanne's foot come down on hers under the table, as if she needed it.

*.*

Sam watched in growing impatience as Deanne tried search terms in the local paper's archive web site. _Female murder hitchhiking_ got nothing; Dee changed it to _female murder Centennial Highway_ for the same result. Finally she couldn't stand it anymore and said, "Let me try." She reached for the keyboard and Deanne smacked it away. "I got it," she insisted.

Sam looked down at her as she rested her fingers on the keyboard and tapped them, radiating _I am thinking very hard_ for all she was worth. Finally Sam bent and shoved Deanne's wheeled library chair out of the way bodily, over Deanne's protests.

"You're such a control freak," Deanne grumbled. Sam ignored her-rather than come out with something along the lines of _You should talk_-and said, "So angry spirits are born out of violent death, right?"

"Yeah," Deanne agreed grudgingly.

"Nothing says _violent_ has to equal _murder_." Sam made a change in the search box and clicked; one article popped up. She opened it and began to scan. It included a picture of an attractive young woman with dark hair and a tooth-achingly 80s haircut.

"OK, This was 1981," she said. "Constance Welch, twenty-four years old, jumps off Sylvania Bridge and drowns in the river."

"Does it say why she did it?"asked Deanne.

"Yeah," Sam said. It was bad, not the kind of thing that you looked at and couldn't understand.

"What?"

"An hour before they found her, she called 911," Sam said grimly. "Apparently her two little kids are in the bathtub. She leaves them alone for a minute, and when she comes back, they aren't breathing. Both die."

Deanne winced.

"'Our babies were gone, and Constance just couldn't bear it,' said husband Joseph Welch," Sam quoted.

Deanne looked over the pictures on the screen and tapped one. "That bridge look familiar to you?" It was the bridge where Troy's car had been parked that morning.

_*.*_

Sam made perfunctory protests to going out while it was still dark, but it actually made a fair amount of sense. They parked the Impala at one end and walked out onto the span, looking over the railings as they went.

"So this is where Constance took the swan dive," Deanne said.

"So you think Mom would have been here?" Sam asked idly. She actually rather preferred not to think of poor Constance, driven mad with grief over the deaths of her children.

"Mom's chasing this story, and we're chasing her," Deanne replied.

"Okay," Sam said slowly. "So now what?"

Deanne gave her one of those big-sister looks that she loathed. "_Now_ we keep digging till we find her. Might, you know, take a while."

Sam stopped walking. "Dee, I told you, I've got to be back for Monday." Deanne paused and turned back to face her.

"Monday, right. The big interview," Deanne said, an edge in her voice.

"Yeah."

"Yeah, I forgot," Deanne said. She paused for a second. "You're really serious about this, aren't you? You think you're just going to become some lawyer? You think your boy's gonna ask you?"

Sam laughed a little, and said, "Maybe I'll ask him. Why not?"

Deanne fixed her with a glare. "Does Jesse even know the truth about you? I mean, does he know about the things you've done?" The question sounded a little threatening. Sam took a step closer to her sister and returned the hard look.

"No. And he's not ever going to know." _Because once you find Mom, you'll be gone again, and he won't need to know, _she thought furiously.

Deanne _tsk_ed at her. "Well, that's healthy. You can pretend all you want, Sammy. But sooner or later you're going to have to face up to who you really are." She turned and started walking again, her boots ringing on the pavement. Sam glared at her back for a moment, then followed.

"Who's that, Dee?" she asked, and she could hear her voice going very even.

"You're one of us," Deanne said, offhanded and over her shoulder.

Sam took a few quick steps and rounded on her sister, forcing her to stop. "No," she said, low and fierce. "I'm not like you._ This_ is not going to be my life." Her hand made an encompassing gesture, taking in the bridge and the Impala and everything within range.

"You have a responsibility to—"

"To _what_?" Sam demanded. "To Mom and her crusade? If it weren't for pictures I wouldn't even know what Dad looked like. It's not like it would make any difference anyway! Even if we found the thing that killed him, he'd still be dead! And he's _not coming back_."

Deanne grabbed her by the front of her shirt, and Sam was forcibly reminded that her sister might be shorter but she wasn't anything like weaker. Deanne shoved her back until she fetched up against the support pillar of the bridge and spoke through gritted teeth. "Don't. Talk about him like that."

After a long second, Deanne released her grip and turned away. She took a few steps and then Sam saw her stiffen.

"Sam," she said. The anger was gone, but not the tension, and Sam looked in the direction Deanne was facing. A woman in a white, sleeveless dress stood on the railing at the side of the bridge. Sam went to stand beside Deanna as the woman glanced at them...and stepped off. They hurried to the same point and looked over, but there was no sign of a body.

"Where'd she go?" Deanne asked. Sam shook her head. And behind them, she heard the distinctive growl of the Impala's engine.

They turned in unison. The car's headlights came on. "What the hell?" Deanne said.

"Who's in your car?"

Deanne met Sam's eyes and held up her hand. The car keys dangled from it; she jingled them a bit for emphasis. Sam stared at them, then looked back at the car. The Impala's wheels screeched, burning rubber for a second before it started to move. It was coming straight for them.

For a frozen second they stared at each other, and then they turned and ran.

It was quickly clear that the car was moving faster than they were, and they were too far from the end of the bridge to make it before the Impala caught up. They angled for the railing. Sam got a blurred glimpse of Deanne throwing herself over the side as she grabbed the railing and leaped for it. Above her she heard the car roar past.


	4. The Plot Thickens

Sam hung from the side of the bridge by one precarious hand for a long second before she managed to get a grip with the other. The sound of the Impala's engine faded and cut off; she stayed right where she was for as long as she could, but eventually the strain built up to the point that she had to pull herself up or fall. She hauled herself back up and over the railing by main force, blessing as she did the broad shoulders that made it so hard to find shirts that fit; like most women the majority of her strength was in her legs, but it was possible to design a workout to counter that tendency and natural talent helped a lot.

For a second she just sat on the tarmac, breathing hard. Then Sam realized she had no idea where her sister was, and got to her feet. She leaned over the railing again, yelling Deanne's name.

After a second she caught movement. "Dee!" she called, as Deanne pulled herself out of the water, only half upright. Deanne sat down hard and turned her face up. In the uncertain light from the bridge Sam couldn't tell much, but at least Deanne seemed to be moving normally.

"What?" she demanded. She sounded annoyed, and out of breath, but not pained.

"Are you all right?"

Deanne waved one hand in a gesture Sam could barely make out. "I'm super," she said, and Sam laughed in relief.

Once Deanne had clambered back up to the road level, the first thing she did was insist on checking the Impala for damage. Sam decided that discretion was the better part of not being snapped at and said nothing while Deanne popped the hood and poked around under it for a few minutes, muttering to herself all the while.

Finally she slammed it shut again and turned to lean on it, still irritated but Sam could detect hints of relief. "Is your car all right?" she asked.

"Yeah," Deanne said. "Whatever she did, it seems to be all right now. What a _bitch_. Screwing with my car, that's not right."

"She doesn't want us digging around, that's for sure," Sam said. "So, where's the job go from here, genius?" She leaned on the hood next to Deanne, who gave her a look that was purely disgusted and threw her arms out in a theatrical shrug. A few bits of mud spattered to the ground, and Deanne's expression soured further.

This close Sam could smell the mud. "You stink," she said.

"I know," Deanne said glumly.

*.*

They pulled the emergency tarp out of the trunk to cover the driver's seat so Deanne wouldn't get gunk all over the upholstery and went looking for a motel. It was near dawn when they found one; the bonus was that Deanne was nearly dry. Since she was the one with the credit card, she got to deal with the desk clerk, too, which Sam was sure didn't make her any happier. Sam hung back a bit, paying little attention until she heard the desk clerk ask, "So, what, are you having a family reunion or something?"

"What do you mean?" Sam asked, before Deanne could draw breath for it.

"Aframian, that's a pretty recognizable name. That other lady, Connie? Paid for the whole month."

Deanne shot Sam a look and then turned back to the clerk, giving him her best smile; from the look on his face it was working even through the remaining dirt. He told them the room number with no trouble, but claimed to be unable to give them a key.

So when they got to the room, Deanne stood guard while Sam picked the lock. She'd always had a talent for it, and weirdly it wasn't something she had to hide at school; a surprising number of her acquaintances could pick at least basic locks.

The cheap lock yielded quickly. Sam pocketed her lock picks and stepped through the door, then reached back out to pull Deanne in after her.

The walls were covered with clippings, maps, pictures and post-its. There were books on the table, the kind of books Sam was all too familiar with: thick, leather-bound, with heavy handmade paper and archaic typefaces. Sam looked down and, sure enough, Mom had laid a line of salt across the door. "Hoo boy," Sam said. She knelt and picked up a pinch of the salt, rubbing it between her fingers.

Deanne flicked on the bedside lamp and picked up the half-eaten hamburger that lay on the table next to it. She sniffed it and recoiled. "I'm gonna say she hasn't been here for a couple days at least," Deanne said, dropping the burger back onto the paper bag it had been sitting on.

"Salt, cats'-eye...Mom was worried, Dee. Trying to keep something out." Deanne murmured agreement, studying one wall's worth of information. "What've you got?" Sam asked.

"Looks like Centennial Highway victims."

Sam nodded and got back to her feet. She joined her sister within reading distance of the wall as Deanne continued, "I don't get it; there's no pattern. Different guys, different jobs, ages, ethnicities. There's always a connection. What do these guys have in common?"

Sam shook her head and turned to look over the other walls. There were articles and notes on any number of topics; their mother's usual approach to research was to grab anything even roughly related and see what stuck once the evidence came in. But one item caught her eye: a printout of the article from the _Jericho Herald_ about Constance Welch. There was a note stuck to it in Mom's square, neat handwriting that said "Woman in white". Sam felt herself nodding.

"Mom figured it out," she said, and Deanne turned to look. Sam tapped the printout with a finger. "She found the same article we did. It's Constance Welch. She's a woman in white."

Deanne turned back to the photos of the victims and smiled at them, but it wasn't a happy or friendly look at all. "You sly dogs," she said. "OK, well, if we're dealing with a woman in white Mom would have found the corpse."

"She might have another weakness," Sam said, though of course destroying the bones was usually the best way to deal with ghosts. 

"Mom would want to make sure." Deanne came back to stand next to her and studied the wall. "She'd dig her up. Does it say where she's buried?"

Sam shook her head and said, "No, not that I can tell. If I were Mom, though, I'd go ask her husband." She checked the date on the article and did the math in her head; Joseph Welch had been thirty in 1981, which would make him sixty-four now. "If he's still alive." Not that sixty-four was ancient or anything, but stuff happened, and anyway Constance might have caught up with him.

"Sure," Deanne said. "Why don't you see if you can find an address. I'm gonna get cleaned up." She headed for the door, and Sam turned away from the wall.

"Dee," she said. Deanne stopped. "What I said earlier, about Mom and Dad. I'm sorry."

Deanne held up a hand, making a theatrical warding motion. "No chick-flick moments," she said. Sam couldn't help laughing. "Fine," she said. "Jerk."

"Bitch," Deanne replied, and turned away again, heading to the car for fresh clothes. Sam chuckled. She was going to go back to studying the wall, but as she turned her head something caught her attention. There was a picture stuck into the frame of the large mirror that faced the room's bed. She stepped closer, and sure enough it was the shot of the three of them, sitting on the hood of the Impala. Sam had a very vague memory of the day that picture had been taken, sitting on her mother's lap, both of them sweating in the heat. Deanne, sitting next to them, had been wearing a Cubs cap that had disappeared a few years later. Her mother had smiled for the camera and all three of them were squinting against the sun.

She reached out for the picture and couldn't quite bring herself to touch it.

*.*

It took a while, but clean clothes and a long shower later Deanne felt more like a human being. She wasn't the kind of person who needed to be squeaky clean all the time; she just didn't like active grossness on her skin, and a bunch of the stuff she'd scrubbed off had been pretty gross. She leaned into the mirror to brush her short hair into something resembling order with her fingers but didn't bother much beyond that; the pixie cut she kept it in needed little maintenance and she liked it that way. It would dry soon.

When she came out of the bathroom Sam was pacing, her phone to her ear. Deanne would have bet money it was voicemail from the boyfriend-who, in all fairness, was seriously hot. She grabbed her jacket from the chair where she'd draped it to dry and looked over at her sister. "Hey, babe, I'm starving. I'm gonna get something to eat at that diner down the street. You want anything?"

"No," Sam said absently, her attention clearly still on the phone.

"You sure?" Deanne asked. She raised her eyebrows significantly. "Rosa's buying." This time Sam just shook her head.

Deanne hesitated for a second; she only had Sam for a few more hours, and the way her sister was concentrating on the phone made it clear that her head was already mostly back in her safe little apple-pie life. It didn't make Deanne happy, exactly, but when it came down to it she'd rather have Sam happy and safe without her. There was a reason she'd stayed away from Stanford for two years. But hey, the ice was broken now; they could at least _talk_. So she just headed for the door.

She shrugged her jacket on as she crossed the parking lot towards the Impala. The movement changed her line of sight and she caught a glimpse of the desk clerk, who was standing next to...oh crap, a cop car. He was half leaning over to talk to the cop behind the wheel, who she thought was the guy from the bridge the day before. And he pointed her way.

Crap.

She turned a bit, patting her pockets as if she'd forgotten something, and used the movement as cover to pull out her phone. Sam's number was on the speed dial. She bit her lower lip as it rang, but at last Sam picked up. Deanne started walking, hearing feet on the pavement behind her. There was no hope of getting away, but she could buy a few seconds.

"Five-oh, babe, take off," Deanne said quietly as soon as Sam answered.

"What about you?" Sam asked.

"Too late, they spotted me," Deanne said. "Go find Mom." She snapped the phone closed and turned to meet the oncoming police. "Problem, officers?" she said, with her most charming smile-which was pretty charming, if she did say so herself.

It was the head cop from the bridge all right, Jaffe. He said, "Where's your partner?" The charming smile didn't seem to be working, sadly. Some people didn't appreciate her.

"Partner? What partner?"

Jaffe jerked a thumb at the motel room and his lackey headed in that direction. Deanne saw no movement, so hopefully Sam was already on her way out. Jaffe turned his attention back to her and gave her a once-over that was intended to be insulting. "So," he said. "Fake US Marshal. Fake credit card. You got anything that's real?"

Deanne looked down at herself, back up, and felt the smile turn into a grin. "My boobs," she said. Jaffe's expression froze and his hand came down on her shoulder. She eyed it, but getting into a fight with this guy was perhaps not the way to go right now. He marched her over to the cop car and switched his grip to the collar of her jacket.

She restrained a sigh-she hated this part. He pushed her into the side of the cop car front-first and grabbed her wrist, flicking a handcuff around it as he began to recite. "You have the right to remain silent-"


	5. Digging

They left her stewing in the interrogation room for most of an hour. Deanne amused herself trying to rub off the ink from being fingerprinted, with little success. They were trying to make her nervous, of course, and while it wasn't working quite the way they hoped she was a little worried about Sammy; four years as a solid citizen had probably dulled some of the run-from-the-cops reflexes.

At last the sheriff himself came in, carrying a cardboard box. He was older than the other cops, complete with graying mustache and a little bit of paunch, but Deanne was pretty sure he knew what he was doing. Not that he scared her either; she was just going to have to be a little careful.

The sheriff, whose nametag said "Pierce", set the box down on the table with a thud and went to sit across from her. He put his hands on the table and fixed her with what was probably meant to be an intimidating stare. "So, you want to give us your real name?" he asked after a moment.

Deanne smiled at him and said, "I told you, it's Jett. Joan Jett."

Pierce made a face like she'd disappointed him. Probably would have worked on Sam, too. "I'm not sure you realize just how much trouble you're in here, young lady," he said.

"Are we talking misdemeanor trouble, or 'squeal like a pig' trouble?" Deanne asked innocently.

"You've got the faces of ten missing persons taped to your wall," he said. Deanne thought about pointing out that it wasn't actually _her_ wall, but he looked like he was on a roll so she didn't. "Along with a whole lot of Satanic mumbo-jumbo. You are officially a suspect."

She didn't bother hiding her contempt for that one. "That makes sense. Because when the first guy went missing in '82, I was_ three_," she said.

"I know you have partners," Pierce said heavily. "One of 'em's older. Maybe she started this thing. So tell me—Deanne." She tried to cover her shock, but she got the feeling he'd caught it; small town cops weren't _necessarily_ idiots, that was just the way to bet. He pulled a book out of the box and tossed it onto the table, and Deanne's eyes widened. It was Mom's journal, the one she kept records of her hunts in. Pierce flipped it open and started paging through it. "This hers?"

Deanne stared at the journal, a twist of worry starting in her gut. Mom kept that book like a family Bible; it wasn't like her to leave it behind for anything short of a life-threatening situation. Pierce was still watching her closely. "I thought that might be your name," he said. "See, I leafed through this. What little I could make out—I mean, it's nine kinds of crazy." Deanne leaned forward, trying to put on curiosity. "I found this too," the sheriff continued, and flipped to one of the blank pages in the back. In the center, circled, was _Deanne 35-111_. Pierce leaned on the table, intruding almost into her personal space. "Now, you're stayin' right here till you tell me _exactly_ what the hell that means," he said. Deanne met his eyes, but for once she didn't know what to say.

*.*

Sam stood on the tiny concrete porch and raised her hand to knock. It hadn't been hard to dig up an address for Joseph Welch, and fortunately he still lived in Jericho. Sam had given it a few minutes of thought before deciding to come out here, finally deciding that a few hours in the police station wasn't going to hurt Deanne, and that all this would probably be easier without both of them trying to dodge the cops.

Sam really wasn't eager to collect a police record, either. She knocked on the door firmly.

After a few seconds she heard movement and stood back so the door would open. The man who peered out was recognizable from his newspaper photograph, though he hadn't aged all that well. "Hi," Sam said. "Are you Joseph Welch?"

"Yeah," he replied, sounding a little wary. Sam smiled at him and hunched a little, trying to make it less obvious she was taller than him. A lot of men, especially older ones, really didn't like that.

"Mr. Welch, my name's Sam Vickers—" Deanne liked to use rock stars for her aliases; Sam usually went for gun-makers because, well, _Winchester_ "—and I was wondering if I could ask you about a friend of mine."

"A friend," he said.

"Yes." She held out the picture from the motel room; it wasn't great, but the best she had, and Mom hadn't changed that much. "She's been out of touch for a few days and people are starting to get worried," she offered. Welch stepped out onto the porch and closed the door firmly behind him, but he extended a hand for the photo. Sam was surprised to feel a little pang at letting it go. They walked slowly down the driveway as Welch examined the picture.

"The woman?" he asked, and Sam nodded.

"She looks kinda like that lady that was here," Welch said, and stopped walking to look closer. "OK, yeah, she was older, but that's her."

Sam felt a surge of relief. So she and Mom had fought; that didn't mean she wanted her to be _dead_. Welch handed the photo back and Sam tucked it into her wallet.

Welch continued, "She came by three or four days ago. Said she was a reporter." He seemed dubious about that, but Sam was getting the feeling that dubious was just his natural state. She was just glad Mom had used a cover that was easy to work herself into.

"That's right," she said. "We're working on a story together, but she hasn't filed anything and our editor sent me out to ask around."

Welch nodded, but he didn't look happy. "Well, I don't know what the hell kinda story you're working on. The questions she asked me?"

Trying to sound sympathetic, Sam said, "About your wife Constance." Welch nodded.

"She wanted to know where she was buried."

"And where is that again?"

Welch looked disgusted and said, "What, I gotta go through this twice?"

"It's fact-checking," Sam said apologetically. "If you don't mind?"

Welch hesitated, sighed. "In a plot. Behind my old place over on Breckenridge."

Sam nodded attentively. "And why did you move?"

"I'm not gonna live in the house where my children died," Welch said indignantly. Sam paused and Welch stopped beside her. Something about the way he'd said that made her suspicious.

"Mr. Welch, did you ever marry again?" she asked, a shot in the dark.

"No way," Welch said. "Constance, she was the love of my life. Prettiest woman I ever known."

"So you had a happy marriage?" Sam asked, firmly squelching her opinion of defining love as having anything to do with physical appearance. Welch hesitated too long before replying, and Sam thought _Bingo._

"Definitely," he said at last. Sam snapped her notebook closed and said, "Well, that should do it. Thank you for your time." She turned towards the car and waited till she heard him start to walk away, and then called after him, "Mr. Welch. Did you ever hear of a woman in white?"

He stopped and turned back. "A what?"

"A woman in white, or sometimes a weeping woman?" He didn't reply, so she went on. "It's a ghost story. Or more of a phenomenon, really." She walked towards him, straightening as she went. "They're spirits. They've been sighted for hundreds of years, in dozens of places: Hawaii, Mexico, lately Arizona, even Indiana. All these are different women." By now she was right in front of him, and he was having to crane back a bit to meet her eyes. "All different, but they all share the same story."

Welch looked a little nervous, and covered it with irritation. "I don't care much for nonsense, girl." He turned and stomped in the direction of his front door; Sam followed.

"See, when they were alive, their husbands were unfaithful to them." He stopped dead, but didn't turn to face her, and the feeling of _Bingo_ got stronger. "So these women, basically suffering from temporary insanity—murdered their children." Now he did turn, and now he was angry. "Then once they realized what they had done, they took their own lives. So now their spirits are cursed, walking back roads, waterways. And if they find an unfaithful man, they kill him. And that man is never seen again."

"You bitch," he said, his voice shaking. "You think this…ghost story has something to do with Constance?"

"You tell me," Sam said, as neutrally as she could.

"I mean, maybe, maybe I…made some mistakes. But no matter what I did, Constance, she never would have killed her own children." He took a defensive step back, his face working in anger, or grief, or both. "Now, you get the hell out of here! And you don't come back!" He glared at her for a long moment, and then turned and hurried back to his house. Sam watched him go and sighed.

That was it, then. Constance had lost her kids all right. She'd killed them herself.

*.*

Deanne was getting really tired of Sheriff Pierce. He kept alternating between berating her and acting like an understanding uncle-slash-father trying to save her from herself. It was like he was trying to be the good cop _and_ the bad cop, and Deanne could have told him either one would work better without the other. Right now they were in the middle of a berating phase. "I don't know how many times I have to tell you," she said. "It was my high school locker combo." It was weak and she knew it, but since her role here was pretty much to kill time she wasn't too worried.

"We gonna do this all night long?" the sheriff asked, sounding disgusted. He was drawing breath to speak again when the door to the interrogation room opened and a deputy leaned in, looking a little white around the eyes.

"We just got a 911, shots fired over at Whiteford Road," the deputy said. This was clearly not SOP for the Jericho police department. Pierce stood up, thinking visibly, and finally snapped at Deanne, "You have to go to the bathroom?"

"No," she said; in truth she wouldn't have minded, but the quicker he got out of here…

"Good," Pierce said, and pulled out his handcuffs. He cuffed her to the table and left the interrogation room at a half-run. Deanne gave him a moment to get safely away, then pulled the journal towards her. There was a paperclip holding some loose leaves to one of the pages, and she grinned as she pulled it out. Pierce really should have known better.

It was the work of moments to straighten out the wire; from there the cuffs took practically no time at all. The locks on handcuffs weren't complex, because they had to be reliable, and that fact made them simple to pick. She had her wrist loose before the sheriff and his deputy were even out of the squad room. There was one bad moment when the deputy approached the door, but Pierce called him before he could get a good look and he didn't see that she was free.

She debated for a moment, but the only thing they'd taken was her phone and she could kill that remotely. Deanne went out the window, Mom's journal tucked into her jacket.

*.*

Sam was driving when her phone rang, but she answered it anyway. "Fake 911 call? I dunno, Sammy, that's pretty illegal," her sister's voice said. Sam grinned in relief and said, "You're welcome."

"Listen, we gotta talk."

"Tell me about it," Sam said. "So, the husband was unfaithful. We are dealing with a woman in white. And she's buried behind her old house, so that should have been Mom's next stop."

Deanne said, "Sammy, shut up a second." Sam only half heard her, and continued, "I just can't figure out why Mom hasn't torched the corpse yet."

"That's what I'm trying to tell you," Deanne said. "She's gone. Mom has left Jericho."

"What?" Sam said, jolted out of her thoughts. "How do you know?"

"I've got her journal," Deanne said. Sam felt her eyes widen.

"She doesn't go anywhere without that thing."

"Yeah, well, he did this time," Deanne said, sounding a little unsettled.

Sam thought hard for a second, and asked, "Okay, what's it say?"

"Same old crap," Deanne said, and wasn't that interesting? Usually anything Mom did was the right thing. "She wanted to let us know where she was going."

Which meant…"Coordinates. Where to?"

"Not sure yet."

Sam stared at the empty road, trying to think. "I don't get this. What could be so important that Mom would just skip out, in the middle of a job. Dee, what the hell is going on?" There was a flash of white and the headlights caught a woman, just standing in the middle of the lane; Sam slammed on the breaks, just in time remembering to pump them, and dropped her phone. She couldn't stop in time, but there was no impact; the hood of the car just passed through the space where the woman stood and she flickered and vanished. Sam sat there panting for a second as Deanne's voice called her from the fallen phone.

A flicker of movement in the rear view caught her eye and she twisted in her seat. Constance Welch sat in the back, her hands folded primly in her lap. Her eyes were huge and mournful.

"Take me home," she said.


	6. Water and Fire

"Take me home," Constance said again.

"No," Sam said, and the mournful face twisted into a glare. The lock buttons on the doors popped down; Sam scrabbled at the one on the driver's door but it wouldn't budge. The Impala lurched into motion and Sam twisted to face forward again, grabbing the wheel and trying to steer, but it twisted under her hands independent of anything she did. After a moment she abandoned it to work at the door button again.

After a few minutes of futile effort Sam gave up. It took a little longer to register that they were still going the way she'd originally been headed-towards Breckinridge Road, where the Welch's old house sat empty. Sam wasn't sure what good that was going to do her, if she couldn't get out of the car to dig up the body, but at least it was progress of a sort. She'd told Deanne where the body was; Dee could even be there now, digging. Constance sat in the back seat, prim and sad again, flickering occasionally.

Sam didn't know whether that counted as a good sign.

It didn't take very long to reach the Welch house; the car stopped not far from the front porch. The awning over it leaned drunkenly and most of the glass was missing from the windows. The Impala's engine cut out and the headlights flicked off.

Into the silence, Sam said, "Don't do this." In the rear view mirror, Constance flickered.

"I can never go home," she said, and her voice was sad, but under it there was a thread of something else.

Sam opened her mouth, wondering what was going to come out, and said, "You're _afraid_ to go home." She turned in her seat, but Constance wasn't in the back; instead she was in the passenger seat, staring.

"I'm so cold," she said. Sam shook her head.

"You can't kill me," she said. "I'm not one of your men."

"It doesn't matter," Constance said, and reached over to lay a hand on Sam's chest, flickering out as she made contact. For a second Sam just stared, and then the pain hit her and she shouted, pulling her hoodie away from the sudden burns where Constance's fingers were touching her; Constance was visible again, staring, and something horrible flashed behind her face. Sam tried to get a grip on Constance's wrist, but there was nothing really there.

And then the window shattered, crumbles of glass exploding into the back of her head. Constance startled and the pain in Sam's chest lessened. There was the sound of a shot and Constance glared out the window. Sam turned her head enough to see Deanne approaching, squeezing off another shot as she came. Finally Constance vanished and Sam took the briefest of seconds to catch her breath.

Her hand fumbled for the keys and found them, turned them and the Impala started with a growl. "I'm taking you home," Sam said, hoping like hell that this was the right thing to do-because if it wasn't, she had no idea what to try next.

She caught a flash of Deanne taking a step back from the path of the car before the hood hit the side of the house with a splintering crash. The weathered wood gave under the impact and the Impala smashed into the living room; Sam let up on the gas as the car shook to a halt. She heard Deanne's footsteps coming through the wreckage.

"Sam! Sam, are you okay?" Deanne called, and Sam shook the cobwebs from her brain to answer. "I think," she said, turning enough to meet Deanne's worried eyes.

"Can you move?" Deanne asked.

Sam almost laughed. "Yeah. Gimme a hand though." Deanne was opening the driver's door when there was a flicker of motion and they both looked up.

Constance stood in the wreck of the living room, holding a framed photo in one hand. It showed her, and two smaller blurs that Sam assumed were the children. The children she'd killed in her rage at her husband. Deanne helped lever Sam out of the car and Constance seemed to notice them; her expression turned hard and angry and she let the photo drop. A side table scooted across the floor and pinned them both against the car; Sam grunted in pain and tried to push it away, but it was just as bad as the steering wheel had been.

Behind Constance, water began to pour down the stairs; she turned to look at it, and the bit of her expression Sam could see went scared and still. Beside her, two small shapes flickered into existence: a boy and a girl, both under ten, holding hands. They were drenched, and they looked up at Constance with creepily blank faces. When they spoke, it was in unison.

"You've come home to us, Mommy."

Constance flinched back, and suddenly the children were behind her, their arms around her waist. Constance screamed and flickered, she and the children blurring, and in a surge of energy Sam could feel in her bones all three of them collapsed into water that splashed onto the floor.

The pressure on the table let up. Sam and Deanne shoved it away and took a few cautious steps in the direction of the spreading puddle.

"So...I'm gonna say this is where she drowned her kids," Deanne said.

Sam nodded and said, "That's why she couldn't go home. She was scared to face them."

Deanne flashed her a grin and said, "You found her weak spot. Nice work, Sammy." She patted Sam on the shoulder, managing to hit one of the burned spots and Sam laughed rather than gasp.

"Yeah, wish I could say the same for you," she said, letting her relief color her voice. What were you thinking shooting Casper in the face, you freak?"

"Hey, I saved your ass," Deanne shot over her shoulder. She stopped a pace from the Impala. "I'll tell you another thing. If you screwed up my car?" She turned to give Sam a serious look. "I'll kill you."

Sam couldn't help it; she broke into real laughter. After a second, Deanne grinned.

*.*

In the end the worst damage was one dead headlight, and Deanne conceded that she could let that go with just a little maiming. They got gas at the station on the edge of town; Sam paid so Deanne wouldn't risk showing her face. Once they were on the road Sam spent a few minutes spreading out a US map. She found herself humming along to "Highway to Hell" as she struggled with the coordinates, until she finally had an idea.

"She just had to use polar coordinates," Sam grumbled. Deanne shrugged, tapping her fingers on the wheel.

It took a few moments to get the map flat enough to lay the ruler over it, but the vast expanse of the Impala's dashboard had just enough space. Sam traced the line lightly.

"OK, here's where Mom went. It's Blackwater Ridge, Colorado."

Deanne nodded and said, "Sounds charming. How far?"

Sam glanced at her, but she was staring ahead. "About six hundred miles," Sam said slowly.

"Hey, if we haul ass we could make it by morning," Deanne said. She sounded casual but Sam could hear the tension under it. She paused for a second before she said, slowly, "Dee...I..." She trailed off.

"You're not going," Deanne said flatly. She didn't seem angry so much as resigned.

"The interview's in like, ten hours. I gotta be there," Sam said, hating that she felt the need to justify herself.

Deanne nodded. "Yeah," she said. "Yeah, whatever." She glanced over and Sam didn't know what she saw in her face, but Deanne nodded again and turned back to the road. "I'll take you home."

*.*

The rest of the drive was silent except for the music.

When they pulled up in front of the apartment building, Deanne didn't turn off the engine. Sam got out, but once the door was closed she turned and leaned through the window.

"Dee—call me when you find her?" Deanne nodded, and on impulse Sam continued, "And maybe I can meet up with you later, huh?"

"Yeah, all right," Deanne said. She even smiled a little though it faded quickly. Sam hesitated for a second, and then straightened up. She got less than half a step before Deanne said, "Sam."

She turned back. Deanne was leaning over the passenger seat to be able to meet her eyes. "You know, we made a hell of a team back there," she said, and Sam smiled.

"Yeah," she said. After that there didn't seem to be anything else to say, so she hefted her duffel onto her shoulder and headed for the door.

*.*

Deanne waited until the door shut behind Sam before she put the car in gear. She drove slowly, turning over her options. Probably best to get a motel room for the rest of the night, follow up Mom's coordinates meant in the morning; she was dead on her feet and all too familiar with the dangers of driving while tired; if she'd had Sam to talk to she could have made it, but alone she'd drive off the road.

She was most of a block down when her watch suddenly gave a despairing chirp and died. The music broke up into static. Deanne's eyes jumped to the rear view mirror, and all along the street the lights on their poles were flickering and sputtering out.

There were no other cars visible. She threw the Impala into the tightest turn it could handle.

*.*

The apartment was dark and quiet when she shut the door behind her. "Jess?" she called. "You home?" There was no answer, but on the table where they kept keys and bills was a plate of cookies, with a note that said _Missed you, love you!_ Sam smiled as she picked one up and dropped her bag next to the table. Jess could cook, and more importantly didn't feel it was unmanly to do so; it was one of the things she loved about him.

Once in the bedroom she could hear the shower running, so she sat heavily on the bed, her eyes falling shut. It had been an awfully long couple of days, and she was going to need all the sleep she could get to be in good shape for her interview. Tempting as it was to wait till Jesse got out of the shower, it was probably smarter to just go straight to bed…or rather, to sleep.

Sam flopped over onto her back, thinking as she did that this was a damn fine way to end up falling asleep in her clothes. Something fell onto her forehead. She reached up to rub at the spot, and another joined it. It felt wet. Sudden terror washed through her and her eyes snapped open.

Jesse was pinned to the ceiling above her. He was awake, alive, but there was a slash across his belly that dripped blood. Sam thought clearly, _I must be dreaming_.

"No," she said, in a tone that she would later remember as being almost conversational. And suddenly Jess burst into flame.

From somewhere she heard something breaking, someone calling, but that didn't matter; what mattered was Jess. Jesse who loved her, who didn't care that in heels she was taller, who baked cookies and left notes and had a little velvet box in his coat pocket that she hadn't meant to find.

Jesse who was dying, right there above her.

The heat pressed into her face like a solid object. Sam cast about for something that would let her get close enough to reach him, but the building was old and the ceilings high; standing on the bed wasn't going to cut it. The dresser, maybe she could pull the dresser over-

Hands closed on her biceps and yanked her back. Over the roar of the flames she could hear her own voice, calling Jesse's name, and she fought to get back to him.

"Sam! Sam, no!" someone said, but still she twisted, because she had to save him and ever moment she was further away. The flames lit the hallway in pitiless detail.

Then she was through the ruined door-_gonna lose the security deposit on that one_, she thought crazily-and the relative quiet and cool was like a slap. Sam sagged against the hands, and they loosened tentatively. "Sam? We have to keep-" She lunged for the door, almost breaking the grip, and someone cursed and something hit her in the side of the head and nothing made sense for a long time.

_*.*_

It was after dawn when the fire fighters presented her with her duffel bag. It had survived, they said, by being close to the front door. Sam tried to muster a smile in thanks, though she was pretty sure it didn't come out well. They talked to her some more, but the words only occasionally strung together into sentences. After a while someone handed her a cup, so she clutched it between her hands. It was pleasantly warm. The fire fighters stopped trying to talk to her.

"Drink some of that," Deanne said. Sam looked up from where she sat on the rear of the ambulance. "You're in shock, Sammy. Drink it. It'll help." She didn't really want to, but to make Deanne feel better she took a sip. It turned out to be coffee.

Deanne sat down next to her. She leaned into her sister's side, and Deanne put a careful arm around her shoulders. "Jess," Sam said, and heard her voice waver.

"They haven't found his body yet, Sam," Deanne said. Sam nodded, and turned her face into Deanne's shoulder to hide the tears.

*.*

She let Deanne do most of the talking. It was clear that the police wanted her statement as a formality; the sympathy on their faces was almost too much to bear. Finally, as Deanne was wrapping up the loose ends of cell numbers and motel rooms, Sam went over to the Impala and popped the trunk. She shuffled a few things around, picked up a shotgun, and let her hands go through the familiar routines of loading; it wasn't any use, but it steadied her. As she was finishing, Deanne came to stand by her. Sam met her eyes, and tossed the shotgun into place.

"We've got work to do," she said, and slammed the trunk shut.


End file.
